


Radioactive

by time_traveling_angel (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Mention of Sebastian Moran, Mentions of genocide, POV Experimental, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/time_traveling_angel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stormy night in London brings someone to the 221B flat of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. She calls herself a mutant, and is on a search for the person who experimented on her, her latest tracking leading her to the well known city of England. The consulting detective and ex-army doctor are thrown into a world of mutants, drugs, guns, violence, and the truth of why evolution jumped ahead several centuries in one particular girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. welcome to the new age

She stared at John with piercing brown eyes, the nearly soaked paper she held over her head dripping onto the steps. Her hood was drawn up, but strands of long brown hair poked out.

“Please,” she pleaded to the man, her fingers digging tighter into the printed words. “Please let me in.”

John considered her words for a moment, still looking at her. She looked flushed, and her legs were shaking, as if she had been running for a very long time.

But her pleading, bright eyes did him in. He reached for her arm, and barely touched her sleeve before she realized she was allowed in. Nearly dashing inside, she dropped the paper into a small bin Mrs. Hudson had put near the doors, her arms shaking a little.

The rain and wind began to pick up as the girl looked around her new place, her face full of wonder and slight caution. She followed the doctor up the stairs, her footsteps quiet and careful.

John walked into the main flat, and saw Sherlock sitting where he had left him: studying some kind of toxin that had been in the victim Molly had autopsied. Sherlock was convinced something else was included in the toxin, that something else was the fatal dose; the main one was just a distraction he had told John, certainty in his voice.

The girl wandered in, her left hand holding her elbow. She made her way over to the roaring fireplace, flicking her hood back with her free right hand. John noticed it was covered with fingerless black gloves, almost blending in with her jacket. Rubbing the back of her now free head, she said, “Thank you.”

John just gave her a small nod, but the other man said nothing. John wasn’t even sure if Sherlock knew that he had returned from St. Bart’s, or that the girl was about six feet away from him; sometimes the detective was so deep into his examining that hours would pass before he looked up to see that night had fallen.

This time though, he knew.

“Who are you?” he asked the girl, his eyes still on the microscope.

“Amaris,” she replied, her left hand moving to grab something silver hanging around her neck. She stood up a little taller (which was almost unnecessary – she couldn’t have been taller than five feet), her eyes hardening.

“And what would an eighteen year old girl with no parents, no job, no home, and no future want in our flat?”

John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He really hated it when Sherlock did that. He knew that the detective couldn’t really help it though; it was a wonder how John managed to survive all this time with his friend without punching him right in the face.

“I’m not a burglar if that’s what you’re saying,” she snapped at him, and John looked over to her, his eyebrows knitting together.

“You’re American,” he stated, and her gaze snapped over to his.

“I’m new here. Just a couple days, actually,” she told him, her fingers still rubbing the silver pendant around her neck.

“Obviously,” Sherlock muttered, adjusting one of the lenses.

Amaris glared at the man, and John grabbed the glass of water he had gotten for her from the counter. Holding it out to her, she said, “Thank you” again, and took it, making sure her fingers didn’t touch him.

John noticed the move, but said nothing about it. He asked, “So why London?”

“I needed to get away,” she said, staring down into her glass, avoiding any eye contact. “Someplace new…and unknown.”

She shivered slightly, setting down the glass. “It’s really this rainy in London, huh? I always thought they were exaggerating, but…” She glanced around the flat, taking in her surroundings fully this time.

When she turned a little, John saw a long, red mark on her blue shirt, and asked, “What happened?” He was only moving to motion towards it, but she must’ve thought otherwise.

Suddenly, she snapped around, and her eyes were…glowing. Not surrounded by light, no, nothing like that. Her irises had turned a golden color, and they were angry. 

“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, and, _oh, don’t let Sherlock have drugged his drink again,_ John saw fangs. Real, actual fangs where her canines usually were. One of her hands was raised in defense, small pointed claws where bitten fingernails had been before.

John raised his arms in surrender position, saying in a calm tone, “I wasn’t, I won’t…It’s alright. It’s okay.”

Sherlock had gotten half-way out of his seat to get a bottle near the sink when she had yelled. He froze when he looked over at her, and couldn’t, no, _wouldn’t,_ believe it. He had seen the Hound, the “giant monster”. It was a trick, just a magic trick, a trick, a trick…

Amaris scooted a little ways away from the two, and they saw her claws change back, her fangs recede. Only her gold eyes remained. But they were no longer angry.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t…I can’t stand it…” she apologized, placing a palm on her forehead. She spun away from them, her legs carrying her to the window. She turned back to them then, and her hand dropped. The eyes still spun with the golden color, and she faced them fully.

“That’s impossible…” John breathed. He hadn’t moved from his spot, his eyes blown wide open with shock.

_Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true._

Sherlock said those words to his one friend back at Baskerville. He knew them by heart, could recite them in a second, and practically _lived_ by those words. But even the words failed him. There was no explanation for the sudden change in eye color, teeth, and nails. No magic trick. No behind the curtain man. 

It. Just. Was.

She sighed, her eyes softening. 

“I did it, didn’t I?” The question seemed to be aimed at herself more than them, and she ran her fingers through her hair, her shoulders tensing. 

“God DAMMIT!” she suddenly shouted, and the two men jumped slightly, snapping out of their temporary trance.

“Just when I think I can pass by normally, I fuck it up…” she said, a hint of sorrow and anger mixed into her tone.

“What the hell are you?” John asked, his tone cautious. He didn’t sound angry or shocked, as she thought he would. 

It surprised her, making her speechless for a few seconds. 

Sherlock noticed John’s hand had neared the butt of his gun when she had shouted. It was still there, but Sherlock knew he wouldn’t need it, not at the present moment. Reflex and instinct for the former army doctor was what generally kept them alive on cases involving sudden movements and guns. Amaris should count herself lucky; had she moved towards them when she had shouted, John might’ve pulled out the weapon and used it.

Not a body he particularly wanted to see on the floor of the flat.

She finally relaxed, and the gold began to fade, the brown seeping through until her eyes were completely normal.

“You won’t believe me,” she stated, her tone flat.

“Try me,” John replied, his eyes flicking over to his flat mate before settling back onto her. “I think we’ve seen enough in our line of cases.”

A lie, but the detective said nothing. He had to know. Needed to know. He was a high functioning sociopath with one friend, that he knew, that he accepted.

But Sherlock Holmes was not crazy, losing his mind, anything else you could call him that would mean “delusional”. Neither was John Watson.

She raised her chin, as if preparing herself for a flurry of words that she knew was coming.

“I’m not a true human. I never was; from the second I was born to the second I will die, I will never be one. I have found out that because of this, my mortality rate has actually increased. I can hear a cat picking out trash from a dumpster two blocks away in an alley, and can find anything in complete darkness if I yelled with my sonic voice. I look eighteen, but in human years, I am thirty-six. Nothing has explained why I am like I am, and I don’t know if I’m alone in this world with what I have. I am lucky enough to be able to blend in with society until I’m triggered and show my true colors.”

Suddenly, a pair of big, black wings snapped out from behind her back. They were bat wings, all leathery and veined, fur lining the top ridges of them. Small silver claws shined at each end point, and her eyes stared at them with defiance, challenge written all over her face.

“I’m a mutant.”


	2. it's a revolution

I don’t remember how I got there. I don’t remember who brought me, who traded my life for money.

In fact, I don’t remember much of my life before the age of eleven.

He was named Darcy. That’s all I ever knew about his name. Nothing else. Just Darcy. The man kept me hidden; he was always muttering about how he would change everything because of me. 

He called me his “little rabbit”, as if the fact that when my eyes turned to gold, that when my canines became fangs, nails into claws, and wings that grew as I did had made me into an animal.

But I could think. I could talk. Senses were heightened. I could tell by the look on Darcy’s face when I told him two women outside of the building were talking about their home lives that it was good news for him. He had set it up, just to see if I was of incredible hearing.

The look of joy sank my heart. I knew what was beginning.

If you saw Darcy on the street, you would think he was a gentleman, a man who was in a professional career and a comfortable living. He was a good-looking, charming man in his late thirties, grey hairs spiking his black hair from his work, that I admit. The grey eyes that many saw as bright and lovely were cold and calculating when he came to get me.

But it’s the experiments that I remember the most.

Darcy would tell the other veterinarian workers not to bother him for the next few hours, to let him get work done. Then, he dragged me into the room he had built behind his counter, sound-proof just for me. The vet job was part real, part cover. He didn’t want to share me with anyone. I was nothing more than a toy in his eyes.

It was a big room. Tables with lab equipment were everywhere, some steaming with new liquids that he injected me with, some clean and gleaming, and their fates unaware that they would be a hand in my pain. He had assistants, but they were always being replaced. I never saw the same one twice. After hearing a butchered yell one night, the screams turning to wet gurgles, I knew why that was the case.

Darcy loved the color white. He told me during one experiment that it made everything seem much more defined, as if the stark contrast was a picture he couldn’t wait to paint on. The splatter of my blood when I sometimes struggled against his scalpels, the drops as they pooled in small dips in the ground reflected in his protective glasses, eyes wide with sadistic pleasure. But no matter how much of my red fell to the floor, there was never a stain on the ivory tiles.

I began to hate the color. It would never tell someone that a living being had been hurt here, that all was well, turn your head away, ignorance is bliss my dear.

I was always strapped to a table, fully clothed with the garments Darcy picked for me especially. He never did anything to me besides injections and cuts and whips, but it every now and then it crossed my mind that he got off on causing me pain. The look of pure joy on his face when I was covered in small rivers of red was the closest I think I ever saw of him being pleased. The sounds he would make…

What a sadistic fuck. 

Darcy would shove my sleeve up, wrapping a belt around the top of my left arm. He favored the non-dominant arm; if I lost it, at least I could still write, he always joked. He often had dark humor. Dismembered arms or legs, cut out organs, just to name his favorites.

I never laughed, jokes or not. I don’t think I ever laughed in the five years I suffered under his practice.

He had made a special needle that would leave no signs of injections no matter how many you did. He was so proud of it; I could hear him talk about it to the assistant of the week when I was in my cage. I sometimes wonder why he did so; we both knew I had an extremely fast healing gene. But the assistant of week 127 had only said, “Not everything can heal, no matter what healing factor you have.” That was the only time one of the assistants had ever talked to me.

He would tell me a story as he began to experiment. News of the world, who was running against who in campaigns, what music was on the radio, the new TV shows, anything and everything. 

Even though the experiment was part of the package, I craved any news about the world outside of my own. It was like a sip of cold water coating my cracked throat; when the coating dried, I always wanted more than before.

He called one drug “The Voice”. It would speed up my heart rate to a certain point; he had told me as he pushed it into my flowing veins. And then noise would be played by my ears to see how it sounded when my heart raced as if I was running with the power of a thousand suns.

It was excruciating. My ears actually bled from the noise. But he would never abandon the project, not unless he knew I was going to die. He didn’t want to lose his “little rabbit”.

It was a drug he liked to use the most. It was one that always was around, even when other drugs proved useless or unchanged in my body, “The Voice” was here, watching and waiting to strike into my blood again.

He loved giving his most used drugs names. Sometimes he cut me while I was on the drugs, to see how fast I would heal, or how much slower I would recover. Sometimes he cut me to remind me of who was in charge of this room of white and untold red.

I didn’t realize my hate for Darcy until my fourteenth birthday. His present was a grass colored serum that caused hallucinations: “The Cricket”. I had arched my back and had rubbed against the restraints until my wrists and ankles were bleeding and almost skin-less, screaming words that didn’t make sense. They told me that when I came crashing back to Earth, my body sore and numb, throat hoarse from my screams, red eyes from my stream of tears.

But all I remembered was seeing my parents in the car when I was nine, and the truck that hit their front end. Blood was everywhere. Glass was everywhere and in their eyes and throats and arms _why wasn’t I bleeding I have to bleed_ and noise, noise everywhere, I began to cry and my tears wouldn’t stop and I could hear the sirens _they’re too loud stop it_ the blood is everywhere and my screams can’t be heard but dogs began to bark and I could hear an echo to my screams _but the blood and glass and death are here—_

It was then that I woke up screaming sonic screams, the echo plain and clear in my own ears but no one else’s. Darcy told me that I had cracked after the accident that took my parents away, that my mutant part of me woke up and took charge.

 _It was the drugs_ he told me when I came back to Earth, my throat hoarse with my screams no one would answer.

 _It was a nightmare_ he told me, my whole body covered in sweat and fear when I woke in my too small cage, the blankets useless, soaked in my fears and nightmares.

Sometimes, it was hard to distinguish which nightmare I would prefer.

I began to become repulsed at his touch. I hated anyone who came near me, my eyes in a permanent state of anger. The anger drove my powers. When the cuts came, I felt the anger ride through my veins, the fight to keep the drug from grabbing ahold of me and using me for its purposes driving my mutation to appear faster than before. My eyes started to turn more gold, and my canines lengthened even more too. My fingernails began to shift, turning into small, deadly points.

The process was unbearable when it first started. It felt as if someone was pulling a tooth through my gum by force when my fangs appeared, over and over again. Someone placing extreme pressure on my eyes when the gold came. Thorns under my fingernails. Knives in my back when my wings sprouted. That was a day I wouldn’t ever forget, no matter how much alcohol you gave me.

It felt as if my skin was splitting, the blood and muscle running down my back, soaking my skirt to the skin that was still there. Stars burst in front of my eyes, and I screamed. A real, human scream. The slick, wet leather wings flapped when I thought of them, and I was crying, my chance of normalcy slipping away even more when I touched them.

I wasn’t dreaming.

They were real as my experiments.

That particular pain lasted days. Darcy had no empathy for me though.

If anything, it drove him to make more drugs, to see how I would react while I transformed.

The wings disappeared after a few days. When I noticed it, I thought of how they looked, and they popped out in front of me, as if they had never left. Another mystery I would never solve, I realized after a few hours of practice. If I wanted them hidden, they did so. Need them, and they appeared, ready to fly. 

Darcy loved my wings. He often told me how he wishes he had a pair. He once pulled on one so hard that it throbbed even more, cementing my hate for him even more in my heart, mind, and soul.

I hated him so much that if someone had given me a plastic straw and let me loose, I would’ve found at way to mutilate him with it. He wouldn’t have been recognizable.

The pain began to fade after many transformations. Now, it didn’t hurt. It appeared in seconds flat.

But Darcy was convinced that I had more in me than that.

And then, the experiments turned into torture.

He would chain my wrists to the wall, and draw out a small, ragged knife. The “One Thousand Cuts” was one of his favorites. He would cut me when I didn’t do what he wanted. Over, and over, and over. The pain was a giant wave that drowned me until the black rescued me from the red ocean.

But the black was no match for Darcy. He always took me away from my savior, the one thing in the world I loved.

It was during those times that I welcomed Death should he come for me. I would’ve walked arm-in-arm with it, a grin plastered on my face, victory in my heart. Darcy wouldn’t be able to hurt me anymore. No more experiments. No more cuts. No more torture.

Pure, sweet Death.

He never came for me though. He left me with the black, to feel the ache of my skin and body when I was pulled away from the unconsciousness.

I thanked my healing process for leaving no scars. I wouldn’t have a body if it wasn’t for that; I would have skin that was striped with clean, smooth skin that didn’t feel the cold bite of the knife.

At one point he dislocated my shoulder when I refused to get up from the floor. I cried out, but he felt nothing of regret for me. As he saw it, I was a future that needed tested.

Some tests would come in handy though. The half-aging was one. The sonic scream another.

He would step right on my back with those spiked like shoes, digging the spikes right into my back until I began to bleed, until I couldn’t cry because I lost my voice.

It wouldn’t end. I never thought of the end, but god I wanted it. I wanted it so much.

Darcy started spending more time drugging me up than at his cover job, his eyes turning more and more manic as he pushed my body, mind, and spirit to the edge of oblivion. He was losing himself.

He could break my body. He could drive me to the thought of ending everything.

But he never broke my spirit.

It was my resolution, when I realized that after a nightmare of blood and Darcy ripping my wings off with his clawed hands. I had fought, refusing to let him take them without a fight. I would stay alive for the cause of making sure this psychopath would never take another person who was like me (if there were any who were like me).

My resolution paid off in the end.

The final assistant of the week called in his buddies when Darcy had reached home. An undercover agent. Mr. Coul they called him. They had been monitoring Darcy after things began to add up that weren’t right; huge payments that didn’t match his job salary, a house that should belong to a mob boss, not a animal caregiver. He freed me from the cell I had spent five years of nightmares and pain and blood and tears in, and the others went to get my captor.

When they reached his home, though, he was gone.

Clothes, food, pictures…everything.

They said he probably figured someone was starting to tail him, and began selling everything in bits and pieces, under the radar, so he could go at a moment’s notice.

They said it was a decoy truck, bombs rigged inside of it if they attempted to open the door of the vehicle. The red beeping light had given it away.

They said they had found a note in the middle of the empty living room floor, though.

_She’s painted red_

_She’ll fit right in_

_But I’ll find her one day_

_And the world will turn to grey_

_When I bring the end_

They put me in a home. They thought everything in the lab was of a mad man, that I was an innocent girl who he had taken so he could try the “drugs” he made. They didn’t believe in his notes, of my eyes, my fangs, my claws, my wings. I let them. I could be normal. I told myself that a lot. But I knew it was a lie. The only truth I knew to be certain was this: I was going to hunt down Darcy, and take him from this world. I began keeping track of drug fields when I could read or see the news; I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to create something that could cause someone pain. No more experiments. 

All pain.

I escaped the home when I turned eighteen one week ago.

I followed the news. And here I am, in London, England, looking for the mad man who took away years of my life. I have a drug to test on him. And it may take a few years to get over.


End file.
